


VY-Day

by ChekhovsDormantSupervolcano



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: (nowhere close to the body horror level of animorphs canon), Descriptions of Physical Injury, Discussion of addiction, Found Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Love and its limits, Non-graphic depictions of violence, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-War, PostWar, Recovery, References to sex and sexuality, Suicidal Ideation, discussion of suicide, dissociation and bodily alienation, guilt/forgiveness/self-forgiveness, mild body horror
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:40:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25664536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChekhovsDormantSupervolcano/pseuds/ChekhovsDormantSupervolcano
Summary: Almost five years after they win the war, the four Animorphs left on Earth aren't all on speaking terms. As the anniversary of their fraught victory rolls around again and the rest of the world celebrates, they each grapple with their own trauma and alienation, and some of them reach out for each other's support.-“Yeah,” said Cassie softly. The silence knit itself back over her. A light breeze rustled the grass. I could hear the scritching buzz of insects and the soft gravelly sound of Cassie’s own breath. She uncurled herself into the pine-needled ground again, dropping her hands back onto her belly. And then her voice drifted up again from the forest floor.“I’m doing everything right, Tobias.”I adjusted myself on my branch and peered at her. After a while, maybe a few seconds or a minute, she elaborated.“I’m sober again. I have a girlfriend, sort of, maybe. I have friends. I meditate, I  get exercise, I have a job that I care about. I try to eat dinner with my parents once a week, and when I have to cancel I call and apologize. I’m doing—everything I’m supposed to do. ‘Reintegrating.’” She kept her gaze pointed at the center of the sky. "It's not working."
Relationships: Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill & Jake Berenson & Cassie & Marco & Tobias, Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill & Tobias (Animorphs), Cassie & Marco (Animorphs), Cassie & Tobias (Animorphs), Eva & Cassie (Animorphs), Eva & Jake (Animorphs), Eva & Marco (Animorphs), Jake Berenson & Cassie, Jake Berenson & Marco, Jake Berenson & Tobias (Animorphs), Jake Berenson/Marco (Animorphs)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 32
Collections: Animorphs Mini Bang 2020





	1. Tobias

**Author's Note:**

> AN: This is a reimagining of the postwar aftermath sequence in Animorphs 54: The Beginning. I've aged the characters up to 21 (instead of 19) and written an alternate version of their experiences after the war. Everything that happened in canon up until the time jump in book #54, happened in this fic. What I've changed is how the Animorphs grew into themselves after the war ended. 
> 
> I'm aiming for narratively satisfying! I am NOT trying for cheerful. Animorphs is a tragedy, and I haven't changed its genre here.

Link here to the [fantastic comic](https://lilacnothlit.tumblr.com/post/625236424910946304/the-2020-animorphs-minibang-is-go-time-hashtag) @lilacnothlit drew of Chapter 4 of this fic: 

(Comic is also imbedded at the end of Chapter 4.)

**  
  
Chapter 1: Tobias**

**7 days to VY-Day  
**  
I saw an osprey flying into my territory with a tiny quilted bag clutched in its talons and realized that it was probably April again.

I guessed I had known it would be time again soon. There were new leaves around. Flowers had started budding. That sort of thing.

I flapped to gain altitude, pulling myself a few hundred feet above the osprey—who wasn’t in thought-speak range yet, but was well within a raptor’s eyeshot— and then did something no bird does: I deliberately angled myself against the sky so that my wings and dusty red tail caught the sun, making myself as obvious as possible. I glided that way for a few seconds, and then folded my wings against my side and dove down toward the treeline.

I sat on a branch and waited. I was good at waiting. 

After a while, maybe a few minutes, maybe more, I heard Cassie’s voice in my head.

<Thanks for the signal flare. But even with these eyes, I still can’t find a brown hawk the size of a soccer ball in the middle of a brown-and-green forest. Where are you?>

<I’m in the big twisted maple> I said. <Next to the little waterfall, toward the bend in the stream.>

<Tobias. I come here twice a year. Where the hell is that?>

<Demorph> I said. <I’ll find you.>

No answer. But after a moment I heard sounds in the forest. About a hundred yards west of me, a medium-large animal was rustling pine needles and breaking twigs.

<Bingo> I said, and launched off my perch to follow the noise.

I found Cassie sitting on the ground in a t-shirt and leggings. Her “flybag,” the tiny pouch where she kept car keys and her credit card when she flew long distances, sat open in her lap. She looked up at me as I appeared between the trees, and with one look at her face, I knew I was right about the month.

<You know that thing makes you fly at the speed of a snail> I said. Cassie and I don’t really say “hello” to each other. 

“‘Thank you, Cassie,’” she replied in a singsong voice. “‘It’s so nice of you to bring me my favorite band’s new album.’ Why, you’re so very welcome, Tobias.” She fished a tiny MP3 player out of the flybag and started to unwind an earbud cord to plug into it. 

I settled myself onto a branch at an angle where she could look at me without craning her neck. <Ospreys> I said with good-natured contempt while she scrolled through her music library. <Weaklings. Have you considered getting a tougher raptor morph?>

“Yes, but then I’d intimidate you,” she said innocently. “I’d hate to frighten you into an early grave.”

Not that early at this point, I thought. But I decided not to say it. Decided, in fact, not to say anything. Below me, Cassie stuck one bud in her ear and let the other dangle on the grass, tiny speaker face up. The sound out of the earbud was always tinny and echoey, but even from my perch halfway across the clearing, I’d be able to hear it fine. 

Cassie leaned against the tree behind her and pressed play. Scratchy, angry electronica filled the woods. 

We listened together, Cassie’s hands resting loose in her lap, my wing feathers rustling occasionally. Sometimes Cassie’s lips moved silently with the music. 

For about an hour, maybe less, the two of us shared the forest, and the music, with each other, wordlessly. 

At some point in the middle of the album, Cassie moved away from the tree she’d been sitting against, and laid down on her back in the grass, hands folded over her belly. She closed her eyes against the bright blueness of the sky. I watched that small movement of her eyelids. I watched her face, older than I remembered it, somehow, every time I saw her. Her face looked crowded, full of thought and unhappy feeling that she didn’t have quite enough room for inside her. 

When the last chords of the last song had faded away, Cassie tugged the earbud out of her ear without opening her eyes. “Thoughts?” she murmured. 

<Not enough bass.>

“The bass is better on a real speaker.”

<So come out here as a wolf sometime and bring one.>

Cassie’s eyes opened. She didn’t look at me, just stared straight up at the sky. I could see that her hands had tightened slightly in the fabric of her shirt. I knew Cassie hadn’t morphed wolf in years. I knew why, too. She’d killed too many people as a wolf. Shapes hold memories. And Cassie was always trying to run away from her memories. 

I didn’t apologize, or offer reassurance. There wouldn’t have been much point. We both were what we were. The silence strained and stretched, and then just as suddenly, it relaxed. Cassie’s hands loosened to rest lightly on her abdomen. Her eyes drifted closed again. The moment of tension had passed. 

I don’t know how long we held that silent tableau. Not long enough for the angle of the sun in the sky to change much. 

It got like this with me and Cassie. Whenever Toby came to see me, she had some reason. The conversation was always purposeful and urgent, crowded with questions and ideas. It was jarring for me, honestly, to deal with that many words at once, when I was used to total radio silence. But Cassie would come to my meadow and just lie there. Sometimes we flew. Sometimes, like now, she lay or sat on the forest floor and we just shared space. Then, after a few hours, she would leave. Often I never found out exactly why she’d come. 

I was pretty sure I knew why this time, though. I was pretty sure it was April again. 

Cassie spoke up as though she’d heard my thoughts.

“It’s going to be VY-Day,” she said without lifting her head. “In a week.”

<I don’t know why you have to tell me that every year> I grumbled. <I never want to know.>

“I think I’m gonna go to Marco’s,” she said. 

<You say that every year, too.>

“Well,” she said. “It’s that or face my girlfriend. I think I accidentally picked a groupie again.”

I made no comment on that. I had a noninterventionist policy toward Cassie’s love life. 

“I think I’m gonna go to Marco’s,” Cassie said again, mostly to herself, I think. I wondered if she might actually do it this year. There was something off about her.

She sat up and looked at me. “Would you come with me?” she said. “You wouldn’t have to morph. I don’t want to deal with Marco alone.”

<I’m not the only raptor in this forest, Cassie> I said irritably. <I can’t just go on a road trip and expect my territory to still be waiting for me when I come back.>

“Right,” she said. “Sorry. Forget it.”

<What’s your beef with Marco, anyway?>

“I don’t have a beef,” she said. “He’s just. He’s Marco.”

<You’re gonna have to give me more than that.>

“He’s fine,” said Cassie. “That’s all. Marco’s fine. He’s managing. He’s okay. He’s—and I’m not.” She shrugged irritably. “I can’t be. Ever. So he gets under my skin, a little.”

<I guess one of us had to make it out of this in one piece> I mused. 

“Yeah,” said Cassie. “I just—” she scowled, and looked away. “I’m an asshole,” she said. “I know. I just...thought it was gonna be me.”

That surprised me. But then I realized that it shouldn’t. For all her perceptiveness, Cassie had an impressive capacity for denial. <It was never gonna be you, Cassie> I said, not exactly gently, but not trying to be cruel either. <You had to give up way too much of yourself in the war. What we did, it went against everything you were. You were never gonna be able to get that back.>

Cassie closed her eyes. I could see her jaw muscle clench and unclench.

<Marco had already lost his world before the war started. He’d lost his mom. And now he has her back. Of course he’s handling things better than you.>

“Yeah,” said Cassie softly. The silence knit itself back over her. A light breeze rustled the grass. I could hear the scritching buzz of insects and the soft gravelly sound of Cassie’s own breath. She uncurled herself into the pine-needled ground again, dropping her hands back onto her belly. And then her voice drifted up again from the forest floor. 

“I’m doing everything right, Tobias.”

I adjusted myself on my branch and peered at her. After a while, maybe a few seconds or a minute, she elaborated. 

“I’m sober again. I have a girlfriend, sort of, maybe. I have friends. I meditate, I get exercise, I have a job that I care about. I try to eat dinner with my parents once a week, and when I have to cancel I call and apologize. I’m doing—everything I’m supposed to do. ‘Reintegrating.’” She shrugged without sitting up, the fabric of her t-shirt catching on the dry needles of the forest floor. She had opened her eyes, but she didn’t look at me. Kept her gaze pointed up at the center of the sky. “It’s not working. It’s not enough. I’m not like Marco, I can’t—” she broke off, frustrated. “I’m twenty-one years old, and I don’t feel like a _person_.”

I considered her, tilting my head to peer at her expression more closely. <What do you feel like?>

“I don’t know,” said Cassie. “An Animorph.” She paused. “A god.”

If Rachel had been here, she would have snorted. Marco would have cracked a joke. But I figured Cassie knew how outrageous it sounded, and had said it anyway because she meant something by it. I adjusted my feathers and waited for her to explain. I heard when her breath paused, caught, changed direction, and I knew she had figured out what to say next. 

“I just feel,” she began, and then was silent for a moment again before starting back up. “I’ve done things, and I’ve seen things and _chosen_ things, that no one should do or see or choose. I’ve chosen life and death for other people, and now I don’t belong in the world anymore.” She lifted her hands off her belly and rubbed her face. “I think sometimes about what I could do,” she said through her fingers. “I mean, we were expert infiltrators. I could shut down the Pentagon, I bet, if I tried. Crash all the computers in the building somehow. I could break into Langley and steal every classified file and put all the country’s war crimes up on Wikipedia. I could kidnap the CEO of Walmart and threaten to chew his arms and legs off if he doesn’t pay his workers more. I could _make_ the world change _,_ if I decided to. How do I justify _not_ doing those things? How can I just keep, keep going to meetings, keep testifying to Congress, keep _arguing_ with people when I have this _power_ ? How can I be a _person_ , Tobias? I’ll never be done. I’ll always be choosing not to act. And people will die for that choice. And if I choose differently, different people will die. And I’m _tired_. I want to have fought my war and be done.” 

It was a longer speech than I’d heard from Cassie in years. I regarded her, turning her words over in my head, slowly coming to a conclusion about how to respond. <You did fight your war> I said at last. <You don’t owe anyone anything.>

Cassie, apparently, was not out of words. She had sat up, her hands wrapped around her ankles, her shoulders raised as if in distress. 

“I owe everyone everything,” she said desperately. “Don’t you see? Either having the power means I owe it to the world to fight, or it doesn’t, and if it doesn’t, it never did, and then all those people I killed I didn’t have any right to kill. But if it does, then it never stops. And I’m _tired_. I was seeing all these therapists, you know, not just for the drugs. For PTSD. But it isn’t just trauma. I made choices, Tobias, I—I don’t know.” She rubbed her arms, as if she was cold. I guessed it was probably chilly in her morphing outfit; it had been a long time since I had worn one. “Do you remember the first time we tried to blow up the Yeerk pool? With Taylor. The natural gas plant.” 

<Yeah> I said. <The time when I almost got us all killed, and you saved all our asses? Yeah. I remember.>

“I morphed wolf to get into the plant,” she said. “To shut the valve off. You weren’t—all of you were—I killed all those people. Human-Controllers.”

Five years ago I’d have said, _you didn’t kill them, they were all alive when the rest of us got there._ But I didn’t bother. Yeah, we’d told ourselves that kind of thing at the time. Those distinctions had mattered back then. But really, none of us ever knew our true body count. Some of those wounds were probably mortal, and after the sheer quantity of death we’d dealt out—and after the magnitude of what we’d lost—being precious about non-fatalities felt like—well, it felt childlike. And we weren’t children.

  
  


<I remember> I said brusquely. <Like I said. You saved our asses.>

“Do you remember what I said to you?” she asked softly. Hugging her arms harder now.

Yeah. Yeah I did. And if she’d come here to be comforted, she’d come to the wrong place. <You said that it would never be okay again.>

“Was I wrong?” she whispered. She looked at me, and I wondered what she was looking at, exactly. Was she seeing a bird? A predator? Or a casualty of war, the kid who’d lost it, gone off the deep end and never come back? 

Was she seeing Rachel? Was she asking for my permission to recover from the loss of Rachel? 

“Was I wrong, Tobias?” she asked me again. And I knew she was putting way too much store by my answer. Knew the question was weighted. But I’m not a liar. I’m a lot of things, but not that.

<No, Cassie> I said. <You were right. Of course you were right. You always saw further than the rest of us. You saw it before the rest of us did. It was never going to be okay.>

Cassie nodded slowly. “I think I made a decision that night. I don’t...think I totally got that that was what I was doing. But I think some part of me decided then, this war, it was it. There couldn’t be an ‘after.’ I had to let go of ‘after,’ had to stop worrying about whether I’d be able to live with myself, in order to do the stuff we had to do. And now, it’s _after_. And, I can’t.”

<Can’t do what you have to do?> I asked her, knowing it wasn’t what she meant. 

Cassie shook her head. “Can’t live with myself.”

It was what she said, of course, but it was also the way she said it. There was a sort of frantic but also exhausted note lifting up the vowels in her words. Like she was desperate, and she’d been desperate for a long time, and she was tired, but the tired didn’t make the desperation go away. I heard that note, and I watched her rock slightly as she held her own arms, and I understood why she had come to speak to me. Not Marco, not Jake, not her parents, not even Eva. Me. 

I understood the decision she was making. 

Before I could form the words to respond to her, she looked up from the ground and stared straight at me.

“Neither can you,” she said. “You know you don’t have that much time left, Tobais. You’ve been in that body eight years. I remember that hawk, he was pretty young when we found him, maybe three or four years old. That puts you at twelve. A red-tailed hawk lives ten to fifteen years in the wild—”

<I know all this, Cassie.>

“What are you gonna do _?_ ” she pressed. “Do you know yet? Have you made a decision? Or are you waiting for it to get made for you?” 

<There’s no decision> I said. <This is me.>

Cassie didn’t answer that, just let another long silence start up, except this time she was staring hard at me the whole time. 

“I could say Rachel wouldn’t want that,” she said, eventually. “That she’d want you to live as much life as you could get ahold of. But you know that.”

<I wanted her to live> I said. I tried to say it blandly, to keep my thought-speech voice as impassive as my face, but I heard the raw edge that crept into the simple statement as I added, <It didn’t change reality.>

Another long silence followed that. Cassie broke it again. “I thought for a long time Rachel couldn’t have survived in a peacetime world,” she said. “That it made some sort of horrible sense she died when she did. An hour before we won the war. Her and Jake, I didn’t think they could—” she broke off, looked away, up at the tops of the trees. “Now I know better,” she said hoarsely. “Now I know _I_ can’t.” 

There was nothing I could say to that. I couldn’t reassure her. I couldn’t tell her not to do what she was planning. Coming from me, it would be absurd.

Oh. There was one thing I could say. I raised my wings, launched off my perch, and floated down to land near her on the ground. Fixed my fierce glare on her face. <I’ll miss you> I informed her. 

She stared at me. Then she looked away. I watched her larynx move in her throat as she swallowed. Then I heard her voice, still slightly hoarse but clearly battling for control of itself. “I’ll miss you too, Tobias.”

She stayed in the clearing with me until the sun started to dip into the lower third of the sky. Then she shrank herself down to a great horned owl and flew off into the pale blue field of budding stars.


	2. Jake

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case this is not apparent: no one character's relationship to medication *or* substance use in this story is supposed to represent the "correct" approach, and the things people say/think about psyche meds are not supposed to be necessarily true; they're just supposed to be varied human responses to trauma.

**Chapter 2: Jake**

**5 days to VY-Day**

My eyes opened wide in the dark. My heart was pounding, my lungs gasping for breath. The sculpture on my ceiling jutted out above me in dark strange silhouettes, and I latched my eyes onto it, letting out a long shuddering breath. The loud crowded images of the nightmare clamored in my head, dream and memory and reality tangling, but in those first hectic moments of awakening I stuck to what I knew for sure: 

There is the sculpture, so this is your bedroom. You’re in Santa Barbara, and it’s [year] or later. 

Other facts settled themselves in more slowly. No, you did not just get bitten nearly in half by a shark; Yes, you are on solid ground and above water; Yes, that war is over, you won; No, Marco isn’t dying in front of you; No, your mother is not here shouting that you failed to save her son—

But, yes, you did fail to save her son. That part was real. And—oh. Right. No, your mother isn’t here, because yes, your mother is dead, too. 

Focus on the sculpture. 

The sculpture was Marco’s idea. Something he’d got from his trauma counsellor. Find something to focus on right when you wake up. Something that’ll help you remember where you are. _When_ you are. 

The nightmares always got worse in April. 

I had pills that were supposed to help with them. They sat in a green translucent bottle in my medicine cabinet, slowly ticking toward their expiration date. Every time the date came, I threw the bottle away and asked my doctor for a replacement. I understood the importance of keeping current medications on hand. I also understood what happened when you looked for absolution in the bottom of a pill bottle. I didn’t want to fall down Cassie’s rabbit hole. 

Sculpture. What time is it? Sometime in the deserted middle stretch of nighttime. Way later than I went to bed, way before I was supposed to wake up. I couldn’t imagine falling back to sleep—actually, could imagine it, I just didn’t want to, my stomach turned at the thought of slidin back into the nightmare I’d just wrestled my way out of—but I wasn’t getting out of bed. There had to be rules. A time to go to bed, and a time to get up. Regular times for meals. You had to create a structure and keep to it, or you’d get lost completely. Right now was the time to be in bed; even the sun hadn’t shown signs of stirring yet.

I could justify going to the bathroom, probably. And then, on my way back, I could happen to stop to check the phone on my desk, just in case I have another voicemail from Marco. His call rate usually ramps up in April. Same time my response rate skids down, traditionally hitting zero about a week before VY-Day and not picking up again until a week or so into May. 

Cassie does the same thing. Radio silence from mid-April on. A fact I only know through Marco and through television, since Cassie and I don’t talk at any point in the year. When we both go off the grid, the tabloids like to speculate that the two of us are vacationing together, which would be funny if it wasn’t so distasteful. Somehow no news outlet has been able to wrap its brain around the fact that the Animorphs don’t _celebrate_ VY-Day. We relive it. 

I tossed back the covers. My T-shirt was drenched in sweat. Charming. I could shower, maybe, but that would be too much of a waking-up activity, and it was still time to be asleep. I felt my way to the bathroom in the dark. Rinsed my face—that helped a little, the cold shocked me back into my own body—and touched my stomach, where in the dream a massive sharklike thing had bitten right through my body. Under my fingers there was no injury, no scar tissue, just the seamless curved plane of my skin. Which didn’t actually help that much with sorting dream from reality. I’ve been disemboweled plenty of times in real life and woken up to unbroken skin. 

After I used the bathroom, I pushed the toilet lid down and sat on it. Ran a hand through my hair. The scattered sensations of the dream were starting to settle in my head. Some of them made more sense than others. There was Marco dying: classic, a nightmare staple, nothing weird about that. There was egregious bodily harm; getting stuck in the wrong morph underwater; way too much blood; all perfectly normal. 

But then there’d been this person, this woman who I’d thought when I first woke up was my mother, angry at me for not saving Tom. That was pretty standard nightmare material, too, especially in April. But now when I pushed through the dream’s earlier sequence of events, I couldn’t find my mother’s face. 

Instead I saw Eva. Except she was shouting the same things my mom always did in my dreams: You were supposed to protect him. The two of you were supposed to look out for each other. And Eva had been standing _over_ me, much taller than me and glaring downward at my face, like I was in a rodent morph, or like I was a little kid. Like when I used to play at Marco’s house in elementary school, before the war, before Eva “died” the first time around, before Marco went from loved and laughing to mocking and sharp-edged, before... before any of us turned into what we were.

It was stupid to argue with a nightmare, especially one you’d already woken up from, but I wanted to argue: _that one’s not fair._ Marco didn’t die. We did look out for each other. 

I shoved myself up from the toilet and out of the bathroom, walked back across the staticky carpeted floor to my bed, and yes, on the way back I did pass by my desk, and I did pause and pick up my phone, and flip it over to check the time—it was 3:00 AM—and I saw that I had two new voicemail messages. 

One was from Marco. A tightness in my chest eased slightly. The darkness of the room felt a little bit less like the black crushing pressure of the ocean in my dream. I swung myself back into my bed, slid down under the covers until just my arms and head stuck out. 

The second voicemail was from a blocked number, and that was weird, because this was a military phone, aggressively protected from spam. Only five people in the world besides me knew the number. Marco, Eva, Cassie, Toby Hamee, and my point-of-contact at work. My social circle wasn’t wide. 

Well. I guessed military encryption wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. I played Marco’s voicemail first.

“Yo, Berenson, three guesses who’s calling. Just kidding, nobody except me calls you. This is my obligatory fifteen millionth invitation to come hang out with me and my parents in my super-secret compound. We’re—well. You know where it is.” (I smiled a little at his reluctance to name the location. The odds of anyone wiretapping my cell phone were close to zero, but old habits die hard.) “I know you’re probably going to hide in a dark room with a blanket over your head until the fireworks stop like you always do,” Marco’s tinny voice continued, “but you’re missing out. As always. Also, I miss you. Um.” There was a pause. “Yeah, that didn’t feel right. Mom thought if I tried guilt it might work better than the supportive friend act. But that just sounded weird. Call me back, man. I know you won’t. But, call me back.” 

The voicemail message _clicked_ into silence. I wrapped my hand around the phone, vaguely comforted by its weight. Marco was right, I wasn’t going to call him back. But I was glad he had called. His voice, dry and gently resentful and not-very-subtly worried, rolled around in my head, pushing aside the graphic images of his near-death. I considered playing the message again. Decided that would be self-indulgent. 

Instead I scrolled down to the blocked number. “Let’s see what this is,” I muttered, and pressed PLAY. 

There was a series of grating staticky noises on the other end of the line, like you’d hear from someone who doesn’t know they’re leaving a voicemail and has stuck the phone in their pocket. Then I heard an unfamiliar voice say “Prince Jake?”

I sat up ramrod-straight. 

“Prince Jake, I hope that this messaging interface belongs to you. I am not sure I correctly understand this piece of technology. My name is Menderash-Postill-Fastill, and I must speak with you on a matter of the utmost urgency regarding Prince Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill.”


	3. Marco

**Chapter 3: Marco**

**4 days to VY-Day**

Mom and I were sitting on the couch in front of the fireplace. I had my leg slung over Mom’s lap, and her laptop was propped precariously on my knee as she pored over a spreadsheet for work. I watched her work, sipping instant cocoa from a mug. I didn’t have a book or a phone out or anything. I was watching Mom. That was enough for me. 

That was the thing that had stuck with me after the war. Jake got his spiraling depressive episodes, Cassie got edgy and angry and mean, Ax disappeared into some new stupid space battle, Tobias was a bird full-time now, and I was just stuck... watching. All the time. The war was over, but the vigilance had never turned off. 

I was calmer when I could see Mom, though. Anytime that I could see or hear her, it was like something about the world got a little more stable. Like I’d done my job, and I could relax a little.

“I can’t believe you drink that stuff,” said Mom, glancing absently at my cup of instant cocoa. “It’s disgusting the amount of sugar they put in those.”

“It has extra marshmallows,” I replied, grinning at her and lifting the cup as if in a toast. She rolled her eyes. “And a shot of vodka,” I added. Her head lifted up from her spreadsheet, focusing on me.

“Give me that.”

I handed off the cup. She took a sip, and grimaced. “Mary Mother of God,” she said, shaking her head as if to rid herself of the taste. “I have to teach you how to mix a drink. This tastes like death”

“I don’t think you should be encouraging me to drink at all,” I said plaintively. “I’m a youth. A responsible parent would caution me to protect my young innocent brain from the ravages of alcohol.”

“You’re twenty-one,” said Mom, handing my cup back to me. “And I can’t tell you what to do.”

She went back to her spreadsheet as if the conversation wasn’t important, which it wasn’t. But there was a soft resignation to _I can’t tell you what to do._ It meant more than she said. More than we ever quite talked about. We both knew that the window for Mom parenting me had closed about a decade ago. We’d done what we could to repair the damage, but we weren’t really a mother and child anymore by the time we’d found each other again. We were two fractured adults, who did what we could to take care of each other.

“These people are going to drive me up the wall,” my mother snapped at her computer screen. 

I took a sip of my cocoa. “Funding cut again?”

“No, not in April. They wouldn’t dare. Can you imagine how that would play in the news? Slashing the budget of Reintegration Services for Freed Controllers a week before VY-Day? Besides, changing the budget takes action from Congress. Setting up a new stupid set of restrictions on allocation, though, that can be done by any austerity-obsessed bureacrat who happens to be sitting at the right desk—”

“Mom,” I said. “You have to actually tell me what you’re talking about.”

“Felony convictions,” she snapped. “The new rules say RSFC can’t use government funds to assist anyone with a felony conviction on their record.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“I’m aware,” she said. “And I’ve said as much. Multiple times. But no one’s interested.” She lifted her eyes to mine, looking regretful. “I think the only way to fix this is—”

“An Animorph,” I finished for her. “Yeah. Well, let’s hope Cassie emerges from her annual mystery romp before the situation reaches emergency status. You know how I feel about making big statements in the name of truth and justice.”

Mom just shook her head at me, her eyes crinkling a little in amusement. I took another sip of cocoa. Then I looked up at the same time Mom did.

“That’s a car, right?” I said, at the same time that Mom, her face suddenly guarded and cautious, said “Is that Peter?”

“No, Dad’s not coming until tomorrow,” I said. Didn’t comment on the way Mom’s face had closed up when she said his name. I didn’t like to talk about the Mom/Dad situation anymore than I had to. “It must be Michelle and Walter. Walter always goes too slow up the driveway and loses traction.” I could hear the awful scraping sound of a car that was struggling to make progress on the steep gravel-laid road that wound up to the half- circle of cabins built into the mountainside. 

I’d had this place built with the royalty check from the first movie they made about us. I liked to call it my compound, mostly for the dramatic flare. It’s basically a long steep driveway leading from the highway up to five cabins set in a half circle, with spotty internet access and mostly-working hot water. Mom and I come up here every year to hide from the lightshows for the week around VY-Day. And every year, I invite the Animorphs—all the ones who are alive and in cell phone range—and their families to join me. 

Mostly, no one ever shows. 

Technically not true. Cassie’s mom and dad have come up most years. They’re desperate to get away from all the cameras, I think. But Cassie herself always bails at the last second. There’s never an excuse. What excuse could there be, for an Animorph on VY-Day? “Oh, I was needed at work?” As if. She just says that she’s coming, and then she doesn’t come.

Whatever. We all handle shit in our own way. Jake never even pretends he’s planning to come. Ax is still out in space somewhere; he launched himself straight into a new war, as if he hadn’t gotten enough of it. Tobias, I don’t even know how to get a hold of. And when I tried to invite Rachel’s family, her mom slammed the phone onto the receiver so hard I thought my own phone might break. 

Odds were like, 100 to zero it was Cassie’s parents climbing up the driveway right now. Mom’s face had relaxed. “Go help them,” she urged me, so I stepped outside. 

I stood at the mouth of the road and shielded my eyes from the headlights glaring up at me. I didn’t recognize the Subaru that was dragging itself in angry fits and starts up the driveway, but I just figured Michelle and Walter must have gotten a new car, until the driver braked right in front of me and threw open the driver’s-side door and I recognized the rough reckless style of motion that was so uniquely postwar Cassie. 

“You came,” I said, shocked. 

Cassie grunted, and pulled herself out of the car. Then she reached back in to turn the engine off, apparently as an afterthought. 

“One hell of a mountain stronghold you’ve got up here,” she said, re-extracting herself from the driver’s seat. She stretched one of her arms across her shoulder, and scanned the five cabins in their half-circle formation, eyes narrowed, taking everything in. Her gaze landed back on me. “Eva?” she asked, eyebrow raised.

“Inside,” I said, gesturing toward the main cabin. I was too astonished by her arrival to offer a more substantive response. 

Cassie nodded. “Jake?” she asked. Her face was drawn tight. 

I hesitated. “Not here yet,” I said. A charade. We both knew Jake wasn’t coming. Although, Cassie had come, so maybe all certainties were out the window. 

Cassie’s face relaxed fractionally; it looked so much like what Mom’s face had done when I told her the car outside wasn’t Dad that I felt myself smirk at her. She scowled at me. My smirk grew into a grin. “Got baggage?” I inquired.

Cassie’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah. A suitcase and a duffel in the trunk. Thanks for offering.” 

Well, I’d walked into that one. “One of the guesthouses is already set up for your parents,” I said, making my way across the rocky driveway to help her with her stuff. “It’s the one they always stay in. We can just put you in the second bedroom there, or if you want your own space we can open up another house. But that’s a project for the morning. I’m not tracking down the fuse box in the dark.” 

“Marco, you have like, three different ways to see in the dark,” Cassie said, more because she wanted to argue than for any other reason, I thought. It had been a little while since I’d seen Cassie in person; maybe I had just gotten unused to her, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off.

“Yeah, I know you like to morph giraffe every time you need to get something off a tall shelf,” I said amicably. “I’m still not hunting down the fuse box tonight.”

“I don’t have to morph giraffe to get things off shelves, because I’m a normal height,” Cassie tossed back at me. 

I grinned at her. “Now you sound like Rachel.”

Cassie made no reply to that. I wondered if bringing up Rachel had been a bad call. It was April, after all. Then Cassie turned away from me to pull the trunk open, and said in a strained distant tone, “Do you think Jake will come this year?”

“Um, he’s never come before,” I said. “But neither have you, so, what do I know.” 

Cassie nodded. I sighed internally. Jake traditionally went radio-silent for the whole month of April. Cassie and I had different theories about why. Cassie had said a few times that it was self-sacrificial; if Jake wasn’t around maybe Tobias would be able to stomach showing up. But I’d talked to Jake more often than Cassie had since the war ended. I had a clearer picture of his mental state, and it was a grim one. I was pretty sure Prince Jake was way past assessing the social intricacies of the Animorphs. Jake wasn’t here because _he_ couldn’t stand to be here. Couldn’t stand to look his fellow ex-Animorphs in the face, especially not on VY-Day.

April was a rough time to be an Animorph. Rough enough that I spent it hidden in a secret cabin in the mountains. Rough enough that of the four times I knew Cassie had relapsed since she went sober, three of them were in the month of April. VY-Day sucked for all of us. But it was worse for Jake by far. 

“His family did a number on him,” I said to Cassie.

She bit her lip. “Yeah,” she said. We stood there for a second, both remembering Rachel’s funeral: how after Jake had given his big public speech he’d stepped down off the podium to go stand next to his dad, and how Steve had stood stiffly away from him. The cold glare Naomi had sent his way. 

Tom’s funeral, a week later, was smaller; not such a public affair. Tom wasn’t a war hero, after all, so he didn’t belong to the country—or the planet—the way we Animorphs did. His parents got to plan his memorial the way they wanted.

Of course, I’m just guessing it was smaller, based on the relative lack of fuss from the news. I don’t know for sure, since I wasn’t there. Neither was Jake. He wasn’t invited. 

That pretty much broke Jake. All those years he’d been fighting to save his family, and the way he saw it, he’d failed. Failed to save his brother. Failed to save his mother. Failed to protect Rachel. And when his father and his aunt wouldn’t forgive him—well, it sent him into a spiral.

“You ever think about morphing polar bear and smacking Naomi up against a wall?” Cassie asked me, as she hefted her suitcase out of her trunk.

“Yeah,” I said, surprised enough to half-grin at her. “But I’m surprised you do.”

Cassie said nothing. I started to feel like she hadn’t quite been joking. She had a sort of harsh grimace in the corners of her eyes that worried me. “Hey,” I said, aware of the oddness of this conversational role-reversal, and a little uneasy about it. “She did lose her daughter.”

“We all lost Rachel,” said Cassie coldly. “Some of us are able to be human about it.” She yanked her duffel out of the trunk, dropped it unceremoniously onto the gravel, and slammed the door closed.

“Not all of us,” I pointed out. I wasn’t sure why we were having this argument. I picked up her duffel bag as she wrangled her suitcase up the pebbled driveway. 

“Tobias is allowed,” Cassie snapped. “He would have died for Rachel. He’s killed for Rachel. Tobias got his hands dirty, just like the rest of us. He gets to be mad about how it turned out. Naomi has no idea what she’s talking about. What we had to do _._ ” She scowled. “And do not even _start_ me on Steve. Do you know he called me? On the drive up here! Said they were having a five-year memorial for Tom and did I want to come. Can you believe that?” 

I winced. “Okay, that’s low,” I admitted. 

“Fuck him,” said Cassie fervently. “And fuck Naomi. And fuck Rachel, too.”

I put down the duffel for a second. “Woah,” I said. “Cassie.”

“I’m serious!” Cassie cried. “I’m _done_. I’m done with Rachel being this great glamorous international hero, or, or, tragic war victim. Rachel was out of her fucking mind, Marco! She was violent and bloodthirsty and she went way over the line, over and over—”

Now _I_ was mad. “Oh yeah? What line is that, exactly, Cassie? Because if this is gonna be a lecture about how you were better than the rest of us, you can get right back in that car and go join the closest VY-Day parade. I am not gonna listen to—”

“Of course I wasn’t better than you!” Cassie shouted back. “We were _all_ over the line, Marco. I don’t know what the line was! But we were over it! And _none_ of it was our fault, and none of it was heroics, either, we were scared and desperate and we didn’t have any options and every decision we made was wrong. It doesn’t matter if right wasn’t an option. We were still wrong! Trapping David on that island was _wrong_ ! Trusting Aftran, risking all of your lives, that was wrong! It doesn’t matter that it _worked_ . I didn’t have the _right._ ” She looked me square in the eye and said, “Blowing up the Yeerk pool was wrong, Marco. We did that together. You, me, and Ax. And it was wrong _._ You were right that we had to do it. But it was _wrong_ . And now neither of us get to be people again. Ever. You live in a secret hideout in the woods like Tobias. I’m about to have a nervous breakdown, just like Jake. Ax is off in _another_ war and any minute now he could die, just like Rachel. Because _we all went over the line,_ and we can’t come back. There is no _back_ ! And I am tired of people thinking they understand, I am tired of people trying to _figure it out_ , to decide who’s a hero and who’s a villain, I’m tired of people who _weren’t there_ deciding they know what was right and what was wrong. I’m sick of people glamorizing it or trying to, to _expose_ it—”

“Woah,” I said, speaking over her, holding up a hand to halt the tirade. “Is this about the article?”

“What article,” Cassie snapped, still angry but momentarily derailed. 

“The article,” I said. “The exposé. The traitor-savior thing. You read it and it screwed you up. Man, Cassie, I should have called you when it came out, I just figured— I mean, you never read those things. I just didn’t think.”

I hadn’t thought. But it did make sense that she'd read this one. It had her name on it in big red letters, after all. Since Cassie’d gotten into the habit of testifying to Congress and giving interviews with _The Atlantic_ about everything from Hork-Bajir sovereignty to the US military budget, she dealt with more day-to-day paparazzi than Jake or I did, but the more in-depth, historical pieces still tended to leave her in the margins. 

Partly I think the media didn’t know what to do with a Black lesbian war hero. But more than that, they couldn’t quite figure out a narrative angle on her. There was Jake, the hearthrob fearless leader, and Rachel, the tragic martyr, and Tobias, who was endlessly fascinating because, well, he was a bird. Ax was an alien. And as for me, the media got a lot of mileage out of the whole child-of-his-greatest-enemy thing. 

But Cassie, they couldn’t quite figure out. She was hard to read, for one thing. She did all her interviews with a calm compassionate air, describing tragedy and gore and psychological trauma in a schoolteacher-neutral voice, and no one could figure out what exactly her role had been.

Until this guy. Maurice Pearson. In an interview on _Democracy Now!_ a year or so back, Cassie had been answering a question about the day Tom stole the blue box, and I guess she’d described it a little more like a choice than an accident. This Pearson guy latched onto that like a dog with a bone. He’d interviewed everyone: Cassie, Cassie’s parents, Jake, my mom, Toby, a few surviving Peace Movement Yeerks that I don’t know how he managed to track down. Even Melissa Chapman. He took all that, and he wrote a 75-page exposé called “Traitor or Savior: Cassie [Lastname] and the Choices that Shaped the Fate of the Galaxy.”

I’d read it. It was pretty good. 

Basically, the guy argued that even though Jake was officially in charge, the decisions that really turned the tide of the war were Cassie’s. The deal with Aftran that led to the creation of the Yeerk Peace Movement; the loss of the Escafil Device, which was 100% Cassie’s doing and ended up jump-starting a rebellion within the Yeerk military that arguably won us the war. The plan about what to do with David (that section was particularly stomach-turning to read.)

There was stuff the guy didn’t know, of course, like that the decision to let Aftran go in the end was unanimous. That Cassie had quit the Animorphs the night before she made her deal with Aftran, that she’d been freaked out and at her breaking point and the stuff she did that day amounted more to a suicidal breakdown than it did a calculated decision. Or that the alternative to trapping David in morph wasn’t letting him walk, it was killing him; it was a moral escape valve, not a strategy call. 

All in all, though, it was decent journalism. But it was easy to see how it might send Cassie over the edge. 

“You’re right,” she said, sharply shrugging one shoulder. “I never read those things. And I shouldn’t have read this one.”

“So it finally happened,” I said, hoisting her duffel bag up again. “You’ve been driven mad by the paparazzi. I knew it was only a matter of time. What did I tell you? You can only give so many serious news interviews before you go clinically insane.”

Cassie barked out a short angry laugh. “I think I passed that point a long time ago,” she said. 

“Yeah, well, this is all pretty bad news for Mom,” I said. I figured at this point it was probably safe to take her inside the house; I started up the steps of the porch. “She has some emergency work thing, and she needs a war hero to throw some weight around in the news.”

“I’m pretty sure her son’s a war hero,” said Cassie, wrestling her suitcase up the stairs behind me. 

I pulled open the door, calling over my shoulder, “You know I don’t do Congressional testimony. It’s those chairs. They aggravate my lower back pain.”

“You don’t have lower back pain,” said Cassie behind me, “because your body doesn’t accumulate damage, you fucking wimp.”

I shrugged. “So maybe I just don’t like cameras.”

At this point Cassie and I were inside the living room, and my mother was jumping to her feet. “Cassie!” she said, surprise and warmth in her voice. She walked right up to us and grabbed Cassie in a forceful hug. “It’s so good to see you.”

  
  


“Hi, Eva,” said Cassie, accepting Mom’s embrace with awkward grace. “Sorry for the yelling. Outside”

“Yell all you want,” said Mom firmly. “We’re out in the middle of nowhere for a reason. We can’t hear fireworks, they can’t hear us scream.”

“Yeah, we could torture someone up here and know one would know,” I said, dropping Cassie’s duffel bag and tossing myself onto the couch. 

“Um, Marco tells me you’re having issues with RSFC,” said Cassie to Mom. “Is it the felony convictions thing?”

“What? Oh. Yes,” said Mom, cutting an annoyed glance my way. “But you just drove here from L.A. We don’t need to talk about work. Cassie, I’m _so_ glad to see you here.” She’d released Cassie from the semi-consensual hug, but as she spoke now she grasped Cassie’s upper arms as if they were the frame of a painting she was holding up for analysis, and studied Cassie’s face. Something she saw there made a slight frown crease her face. Cassie’s eyes dropped away from Mom’s, as though she knew what Eva had seen and didn’t want it discussed. Mom released her. 

“What can I get you to eat?” she said, moving back to let Cassie more fully into the house, and taking her suitcase away from her. Busied her hands with laying the suitcase on a table, closing the door, checking that the latch had clicked properly. “We had steak and brussel sprouts for dinner, there’s leftovers in the fridge that I can pull out for you. Or we can toast, um... some frozen waffles. We're low on staples; I’m going into town tomorrow to pick some things up.”

“Cassie’s vegan,” I reminded her. Although actually, I couldn’t think of anything we had that she could eat. The brussel sprouts had been cooked with the steak, and I was pretty sure the waffles had egg in them. I hadn’t expected her to show up.

“Not really anymore,” said Cassie. “At least not this week. I just went to see Tobias, it kind of takes the veganism out of a person. But honestly, I’m not that hungry. If you have anything I can drink?” 

Eva smiled, although the sharpness of her gaze on Cassie didn’t go away. “Marco has a drink he might make for you if you’re very unlucky.”

“ _Mom_ ,” I said sharply. Eva realized what she’d said as soon as she said it; her lips pinched in brief regret, but she moved on quickly.

“Sorry,” she said. “We have orange juice in the fridge, and water, obviously. I was going to make chamomile tea in a minute, actually, if you’d like some?”

“That would be great,” said Cassie. “I could use something warm. The heat in that car barely works. I almost froze on the drive up here.”

She was doing a good job of defusing tension, but it was obvious she was working hard on it. She _was_ tense, her whole body wired taut. 

“ Please sit down,” said Mom. “Marco will set your things up in the first guest house in a moment.”

“Will I?” I murmured.

“I’m guessing you will,” Cassie murmured back. Unsurprisingly, she turned out to be right.


	4. Marco

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: Scroll down to the end of the chapter to see @lilacnothlit's incredible comic of the middle section of this chapter. (I am particularly entranced by the dolpin-lit-by-fireworks-from-underwater and the fragmentation of "You're human" in that same panel. The vibes are stunning.) 
> 
> I'm working on an image description of the comic, and will hopefully have it up soon.

_Y_ _ou can see Lilac's original post with the comic of this chapterhere:_  
**  
  
Chapter 4: Marco  
3 days to VY-Day**

Mom had, as promised, gone to town to get groceries. A reasonably plausible excuse to leave me and Cassie alone in the compound, for the few hours of solitude we’d be able to share before eventually her parents showed up—Michelle and Walter came every year—and, in a day or so, my dad. Mom had a pretty solid bead on Cassie. She’d picked up as fast as I had that something important was wrong, and she’d left me with unambiguous instructions to find out what it was. 

Cassie, though, didn’t seem to take the hint. She seemed uninterested in occupying the same building as me. She seemed uninterested in occupying any building at all, actually. She’d come into the main house for dinner, since her guest house didn’t have any food in it, and after swallowing down a bowl of reheated soup she’d gone immediately outside. 

I found her lying on the grassy hill behind one of the guest cabins no one had ever slept in, the biggest one, the four-bedroom. She was barefoot, wearing skintight sweatpants and a cotton t-shirt. She was still already in her pajamas, I thought at first, and then realized: Not pajamas. Morphing outfit.

“Birdwatching?” I inquired.

I saw her eyelids close, as though she was resigning herself to my presence. But it only lasted for a second, and then she turned her sardonic glance my way. “You have to be patient for birdwatching,” she said dryly. “Not my strong suit. Also, there’s no light.”

I shrugged. Sat down on the porch steps, just a few feet away from her. Stretched my feet out in front of me. “Speaking of birds—”

“We weren’t speaking of birds, you brought up birds.”

  
“ _Speaking of birds,_ ” I continued, undeterred, “You said you talked to Tobias?” 

All humor, however dry, left Cassie’s face. It was like watching a door close. She sat up, looked away from me, out across the desaturated dusk silhouettes of the mountains. “Uh-huh.” 

“How’s he doing?” I pushed.

Cassie shook her head very slightly. I felt a stone form in my stomach. “That bad, huh?” I said, keeping my voice cheerful. 

Cassie rose to a crouch, moved herself back against the porch, and leaned back against the wood. I could see her exhaustion in the shape of her motions as her butt sank back down into the dirt. She rested her head against the slats of the porch railing. She’d had a long drive up the mountains, of course, and not a ton of sleep since then, but this was more than that. This was the worn-down fatigue of someone who gets tired just from being inside their own brain. 

She looked like Mom on a really bad day. 

“Bird-boy?” I asked her again. This time the worry crept into my voice. I thought, okay, maybe this is it. Tobias is hitting the last years of his hawk-sized life timer. This is what has Cassie so on edge.

“You can drop the ‘boy’ part,” said Cassie simply. 

“Did you even try to talk him into it?”

“No point,” she said. I’d have argued with anyone else. But I trusted Cassie’s assessment. Didn’t like it, but I trusted it.

“What about Toby?”

“Oh, she tries every month or so, I think. She’s persistent, I’ll give her that. But he won’t listen to her. There’s only one person he might listen to—I mean,” she tilted her head to the sky, acknowledging the dead, “aside from the obvious. I guess I should say, one person alive. But he’s off fighting ghosts in a galaxy far far away.” 

I started to say that the Blade ship wasn’t a ghost, but stopped myself. Not the point. And anyway, I sort of agreed with her about Ax ditching Tobias. “You really think Ax could get him to morph?” I said.

“I think he could try,” said Cassie bitterly. Her face had that scowl on it that she got when she talked about Ax. Something had gone sour between the two of them, at the very end of the war. Ax had refused to forgive her for giving Tom the morphing cube, in the end, I think. And she hadn’t forgiven him for being almost ready to let the Andalites incinerate Earth.

I hadn’t totally forgiven either of them, myself. What I _had_ done, though, was let it go. No undoing any of it, and we won, so, whatever. That was my philosophy about a lot of things: “we won, so, whatever.” I had yet to talk Cassie into adopting it.

Then Cassie surprised me. She looked up at my eyes, the venom mostly draining out of her expression. “How is he?” she asked, sounding curious, sincere. “Ax. You two talk sometimes, right?”

My turn to shrug. “Occasionally. Mom has access to a Z-space transponder, through her work. The Ax-man gets pretty busy, though. I haven’t heard from him in a couple months. He seemed okay last time we talked. Hard to tell, with him. He’s in Captain mode all the time. And I was never that good at parsing Repressed Andalite emotional code. That was usually up to—”

“Tobias,” said Cassie, scuffing the dirt with her sneaker.

“Actually, I was going to say you,” I said. Cassie grunted. I quirked an eyebrow. “And, you know, the big guy.” 

Cassie tensed. I’d known she would. I was needling her on purpose, I guess, a little. I only knew one way to get to the bottom of a problem, and it was by being annoying as hell. I was going to cycle through every one of her sore spots until I figured out what was freaking her out. I pressed my thumb down on this one: “You talk to Jake lately?” 

“What do _you_ think?”

“You gonna ask me how he’s doing?”

I could _hear_ her roll her eyes. “How is he doing, Marco?”

“Bad.”

“There’s a fucking surprise.”

“Yeah, well.”

“He still working for the CIA?”

“It’s not the CIA—”

“It’s fucking close enough.”

“I don’t want to hear it,” I snapped at her. “I don’t want to talk politics. Not with you, not about Jake, not in April. I’m telling you he’s spiraling the drain, okay? The ‘counter-terrorism’ thing is part of it. He doesn’t need judgment, he needs help.”

“Yeah, I know,” she said, the words one giant angry sigh, and she flopped back onto the grass. “He won’t pick up the fucking _phone_ , Marco. I know everyone thinks I’m avoiding him, and I’m not gonna pretend that I’m over the moon about the stuff he’s doing these days, but I am _trying_ , I swear. He’s the one who won’t return my fucking calls.”

“You know where he lives,” I pointed out. 

“Yes, and if I wanted to stalk him I’m sure I’d do a great job,” she snapped without lifting her head out of the grass. “I want him to fucking talk to me.”

“Yeah?” I said. “When exactly is the last time you called him?”

Silence. 

“Yeah,” I said. “I figured.”

“He could call _me!_ ” she argued. “I tried! I tried for years, and I got nothing. Why doesn’t he try calling me?”

I sighed internally. I didn't really want to have this conversation with Cassie, but I guess I’d brought it on myself. “Look,” I said, “when you walked out of the Hague—”

“I’m never gonna live that down, am I?” she complained. “I wasn’t walking out on _him_. On the Animorphs. I wasn’t trying to make a point. I just—I couldn’t—”

“You couldn’t be there,” I finished for her. “Yeah. That _is_ walking out on the Animorphs, Cassie. Walking away because you can’t take it is walking out on us.”

She frowned, and looked at me. Finally focused on me. “Marco—”

“I’m not mad at you,” I cut her off hastily. Possibly I was, but I didn’t want to be, and I wasn’t interested in dealing with it. “I’m saying, Visser Three’s lawyer brought up Jake venting the Pool ship, and you couldn’t handle that you had a part in that, so you walked away. That means you walked away from us. From being one of us. Now, me, I get it. I know you never wanted to be an Animorph anyway. But for Jake, that’s hard to get past. For Jake, all through the war, if you were okay with something, that meant that thing was okay. So, when you left—”

“That’s not why I left,” Cassie said quietly.

I frowned. “What?”

“I didn’t leave because I couldn’t stand what we’d done,” she said. “I left because I couldn’t stand hearing that lawyer talk about it anymore. The way people try to puzzle it out, I told you, I can’t—” she shook her head. “That lawyer took the worst moment of my life and used it as a weapon. Not because he needed it. Not because he cared. Just to do his job. They’re all just doing their jobs. The reporters, the filmmakers, these fucking PhD history students who try to talk to me—they all think they get to have ownership over this part of me that—dammit, I just want to move _forward_ , Marco.” She took a deep, rattling breath. “I want to close it up in a box and never look back because it can’t be changed, so what’s the point? I want it to be _over._ And it’s never over. And I can’t fucking take it. So yeah, I walked out. And _I’m gonna do it again._ I’m sorry. You’re right. I am walking away from the Animorphs, because I’ve finally hit my fucking limit, and there is _no_ path forward, and I _need_ to be _done_.”

“Wow,” I said after a long tense silence. “You really are being driven to madness by paparazzi.”

“Marco,” she snapped. “Please tell me that you understand what I’m telling you.”

“Yeah, I understand,” I said coldly. And I did. I had my answer. Enigma, solved. “You’re gonna disappear. You’re going to turn into a dolphin or a snake or something and go live with the reindeer in the forest. Have you told the others?”

“Tobias,” she said. “No one else.”

“What about your parents?” 

She opened her mouth, half turned to face me, and then seemed to give up and looked away. “No,” she said. “I haven’t told them. I don’t think I will. I—god, I’m such an asshole. I just don’t feel like I owe them anything. I know I should. But I feel like, I saved their lives. Saved everyone’s life. I get to do this one selfish awful thing without consulting them.”

I made a noise I didn’t fully understand myself, half-contemptuous, half-impressed. felt strangely detached from the conversation. I shook my head, appreciating the irony as if from the outside. “And I’m supposed to be the cold one.”

Cassie looked straight at me. “Cold, yeah. Selfish, no. Never. You put the mission first, every single time. Above anything, up to including your soul.”

“Oh, _thanks_ , Cassie—”

“I mean it. I know I gave you a lot of shit for that, but I want you to hear it from me before I go: you saved us all, Marco. None of this,” and she gestured at the forest, the mountains, “would be here if you hadn’t known how to put the mission first.”

I felt the words leave my throat before I was conscious of forming them: “But you still think it was wrong. What we did.”

“I know it was,” said Cassie. She looked away from me, and I knew her planned speech was over, she was back to avoiding my eyes. “But not doing it would have been worse.”

I made a face. I don’t know what I was thinking, asking Cassie for absolution. It wasn’t my style. And it wasn’t the point; this conversation wasn’t about me. The point was to talk her off the ledge. I nudged her with my knee. “Much as it pains me to admit,” I said, “I don’t think any of this would be here if _you_ hadn’t been reckless and selfish and stupidly naive, on a couple critical occasions.”

Cassie sighed, barely acknowledging my invasion of her personal space. “Maybe we were just what was needed,” she said. “Not right or wrong, or good or bad, or even smart or stupid. Just the thing that was needed, at a certain time, in a certain place, to make a set of choices that meant the world gets to keep turning. But I think—if you start to use that logic, nothing can stop you. Because then anything you do is what you had to do. It’s okay to think that way if everything’s done. But only then.”

“It is done, Cassie,” I said. I knew I was pleading. I didn’t want to be, but I couldn’t stop myself from trying. “It’s over. We won.”

Cassie looked me in the eye. Her eyes were glowing, yellow-green, and slitted like a cat’s. The rest of her face was perfectly human. She held up her hand, palm facing me, as if to show it to me. Claws, curved and wickedy sharp, slid out of her fingers. She opened her mouth, and I saw layered rows of pointed triangular teeth. “Nothing is over,” she said, her voice garbled by the inhuman shapes in her mouth, “as long as I can do still do this.”

“Jesus, Cassie,” I swore. “You are scary, you know that? That shouldn’t be possible.”

  
  


“You want to know where I go on VY-Day?” Cassie demanded. “Why I always bail on your invites?” The claws had sunk back into her hands, and her shark’s teeth reformed and sunk into her gums as she spoke, but her eyes still glowed bright yellow in the night. “When the fireworks start I get on a fucking dirtbike and I drive up the coast, up into the state park, as far past the road as I can get before my gas tank runs out, and I walk into the surf and I morph. Cormorant. Dolphin. Crab. And I stay morphed until some part of me cries out _you’re human, you’re human,_ like your lungs cry out for air underwater, and I lose my nerve and I morph back. I get further every year! Last year it took me an hour. How much money do you want to bet that this year it’ll take me two?”

She was breathing hard. I was all tension, my fists clenched and my shoulders hiked up. She was on her feet, standing above me, fists clenching and unclenching. I had stood because I couldn’t stand having her stand over me, coming up to just barely her height with the first step of the porch stairs beneath me, glaring into her face. I felt like a little kid, having a shouting match with someone bigger than me, more scared than sympathetic, more angry than scared. 

I slowly forced my shoulders down. Relaxed my hands. “Stupid bet to make,” I said calmly. “If I win, I can’t collect.”

Cassie stared at me. Then she laughed, her hand on her chest, punctuated by short gulps for breath, and the tension hissed away from both of us like air out of a punctured bike tire. I felt my shoulders relax for real. 

“Glad you still think I’m funny,” I said. Cassie snorted. I moved to stand a little closer to her. I didn’t try to put a hand on her shoulder or anything—Cassie and I don’t really have a touch relationship. But I could be near her. Cassie’s eyes closed, and when they opened again they were brown and lightless, shadowed like the rest of her face, peering at mine. Searching for something. Compassion, anger, I don’t know. 

  
  


“Don’t,” I said. I didn’t want to hear her say it. 

“Marco,” she said. “That voice in my head. _You’re human, you’re human._ It’s gone. It got quieter and quieter, and now I can’t hear it at all.” 

It was too dark now to tell if there were tears in her eyes. Darkness didn’t hide the sting in mine, though. 

“You’re human,” I snapped. “Okay? Now you’re hearing it. You’re human.”

Cassie just shook her head. “Marco,” she said again, and I heard fear in her voice, but I also heard relief, and it was the second one that made me shiver. “I think—I’m pretty sure—I’m at the end of the line.”

I stared at her for a long time. I took a breath, and let it out. Then I said, “I’m not keeping your secret.”

She frowned, her head tilting back, as if she were startled. I crossed my arms. “Your parents get here tomorrow morning,” I informed her. “Are you going to trap yourself in morph tonight? Because otherwise, you’d better be ready to hear their opinion.”

Cassie made a noise of disbelief. She shook her head as if disgusted. “Come on, Marco.”

“What? You think we have some sacred secrecy club?”

“Yeah, actually, I kind of do!” 

“We did when we were trying to survive,” I snapped. “If you’re not doing that anymore, you lose your membership.”

“Then I’ll tell Eva you blame her for the divorce,” Cassie snapped back at me. My eyebrows shot up, but I made the decision quickly.

“Fine. For the record, that is a drastic and a malicious oversimplification of my feelings, which you know and which my mother will also know, but fine. Tell her whatever you want. I’m not losing you, Cassie. I’m not losing any more people to a war that is _over_ , that we _won._ ”

“Don't talk to my parents,” said Cassie. “I’m not doing anything yet. I haven’t—” she took a breath. “I haven’t talked to Jake or Ax, okay? And I have to do that before I go. So just—just let me do this in the order I need to do it. And then you can play mutually assured destruction. After I’ve talked to Jake. I don’t want Jake to hear it from someone who’s not me.”

I narrowed my eyes. I couldn’t be sure if she was sincere. But I knew it was _true_ —if her parents learned she was planning to become a _nothlit_ they wouldn’t sit quietly on that information, and if Jake heard it through the grapevine it might be the last straw in his inevitably impending breakdown—and Cassie knew that, knew that I knew that, knew I was the only person on the planet actively trying to keep Jake Berenson sane and that it was a full-time job and that if there was one card she could play that could make me back down with her humanity on the line, it was him.

“You’re awful, Cassie,” I said.

She just looked at me, nothing in her shadowed eyes or her slightly-shaky breath suggesting that she was anything but entirely sincere. 

“I’ll wait until VY-Day,” I said. And then I turned my back on her and walked back into the house.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: So, the parameters of the mini-bang were that the fic should be finished today! And I wish that could have happened, but pandemic-related events made it impossible, and those events did not manifest themselves until after the deadline for withdrawing from the bang. So what I have today is everything up through the scene that Lilac drew, and I'll be adding new chapters as I finish them.


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